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Betsy,

Your Prius is out of the warranty due to exceeding the 100k mile limit. If your dealer says that the repair is expensive, take your car to Taylor's Automotive:
Home Page
in Sanford, NC (I am assuming that you live in NC). They are one of the most capable independent hybrid repair facilities in the country and will fix your Prius for a reasonable price. They are the also source for the ReInVolt re-manufactured hybrid batteries.

I have one of their ReInVolt batteries in my 2004 Prius.

JeffD

 

Call Taylor's Automotive and ask. The answer depends on the OBD2 codes that the dealer reads (ask them for the codes).

You drove your Prius to the dealer and said that it drove with no symptoms so it is likely that you can drive to Sanford. When my HV battery had failed, I actually considered driving (limping) to Sanford from CT. Taylor shipped the replacement battery to my Dealer and the repair coast me $2000 instead of the $3400 that the dealer quoted for a "new" battery.

JeffD

 

It is not covered under that warranty.

 

Do we know what the issue is? (I may have missed it)

If it is the ECU, it won't get worse driving it 100 miles, but I am not sure I heard a diagnoses.

Taylor Automotive web site Home Page

 

It would take a large repair bill to be more than car payments!

 

It might just be time for a new Prius.

​

No; it's time for a new make and model of car that isn't an over-engineered piece of garbage.​

 

R u having a bad day Rich?

 

what a truly *diplomatic* reply!!

 

I'm sorry that you feel that way about your Prius. My 2004 Prius is the best and most reliable car I have ever owned. Yes, I have had some problems with a few of the high technology subsystems, but if you take the time to educate yourself using the resources here on PC, you can protect yourself from expensive maintenance items at your nearby Toyota dealer. Some examples are:

• A manufacturing defect in 2004-2005 MFDs which Toyota has never acknowledged. The Hobbit, a PC contributor, fully analyzed and described a low-cost repair that a DIYer could do or that the average Prius owner could get done for $200 - $400 instead of the dealer's $1800.
• Limited HV battery life. The Great Toyota warranty protects us till 100k miles (150k miles in CARB states), but a failure at 200k miles is a $3400 event at a good dealer (I have seen it priced as high as $4500). A talented (and careful) DIYer can often do the repair for less than $500. The average Prius owner can have a re-manufactured (I used ReInVolt HV battery installed for $2000 - it is a bit higher two years later) battery installed for usually less than one cent per mile.
• A design defect in the speedometer/odometer display in Gen2 Prii. Toyota now has established a warranty extension that covers this till the fall of this year or beyond, but when it showed up earlier a talented PCer, pEEf offered a low cost repair of these subsystems.

There are also several very good independent hybrid repair facilities around the country that can be used when a dealer's maintenance costs get excessive. My favorite ones are:

• AutoBeYours in southern Indiana - I brought my 2004 Prius to him when a problem occurred on a mid-west trip and he fixed it for $40! When a Prius buyer was defrauded (bought a poorly repaired, salvaged Prius - told it was just used) we told her to ship it to AutoBeYours. She did and Steve brought it back to reliable operation for her at a reasonable cost (his core business is bringing salvaged Gen2 Prii back to life)
• Taylors Automotive in North Carolina - Saved me $1500 on my HV battery
• Mellor's Auto in central Florida - has helped several Prius owners when the dealer couldn't.
• Lusious Garage in northern CA (The part-time home of pEEf)
• Art's Auto in northern CA
• Avi's Auto is south central CA (LA area) - A very helpful PCer as well as a good, reliable repair facility.

There are others as well so have faith that a Prius is a good choice for people that need a dependable, practical car and drive enough to reap the benefit of it's great MPG.

JeffD

 

That's interesting. Most people with a bad traction battery report fairly serious driveability issues by the time it's bad enough to throw those errors. Typically things like, loss of power, engine running all the time and revving a lot, very rapid swings in the displayed state of charge (green bars down to purple-red bars and vise-versa) and possibly the rear battery cooling fan running at high speed.

In hind sight, did you see any of the above?

 

Yep, some of the independent repairers mention above might be able to do it for almost half that much though. That's one of the things I've noticed about the Prius from reading this forum. It's super reliable and can save you a lot of money in both fuel and maintenance over a long period, but then one big failure can wipe out a lot of those savings. But if you calculated all the fuel you'd saved (over a similar sized gasoline engined car) I'll bet it's well over $3000 by now.

 

I bet you would be at $2000 at Taylor automotive.

 

As I said before, A ReInVolt from Taylor's Automotive in Sanford will be about $2000 installed.

If you do decide to get a new car, remember that your 2007 has a high resale value (minus $2000 of course) so make certain that you get full value from your trade-in.

JeffD

 

They have a 18 month warranty